Through the more recent concept of Web Services, SOA has gained more
momentum than ever before. Popularized by the success of web giants
like Facebook and Google, it's hard to see an end to this momentum.
Though sometimes unstable (Facebook and Google keeps coming up with
new auth scheme and protocols for their API almost every year), most
developers are content with such rapid changes in SOA-related standards
for the simple reason/belief that changes are always for the better.
Despite the fast evolution, SOA remains true to its original promises
- incorporating principles of loose coupling and interoperability
to effectively reduce difficulties in maintaining complex systems.
We are not sure what SOA will evolve into in the future. However we
are confident to say that, for a software engineering paradigm that
has been around since the 1990s, Service Oriented Architecture has
really changed the way systems are developed, and also the way people
live as a result.